In February 15, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi’s weekly journal Harijan published what purported to be his testament written on the day of his assassination, where he expressed his ideas regarding the constitutional form the Indian National Congress must assume. He wrote: “Though split into two, India having attained political independence through means devised by the Indian National Congress in its present shape and form, that is, as a propaganda vehicle and parliamentary machine, has outlived its use.”
Gandhiji envisioned the organisation’s emergence as a vehicle to promote social, moral and economic independence. He wrote, “It must be kept out of unhealthy competition with political parties and communal bodies. For these and similar other reasons, the AICC resolves to disband the existing Congress organisation and flower into a Lok Sevak Sangh.” He envisaged this organisation to be built at the grassroots level, from panchayats, with members following a strict moral code and working continuously to uplift the rural masses.
However, these thoughts died with him, and the Congress emerged as a political party that, over the years, contributed significantly to the country’s growth and evolution. Until the demise of Jawaharlal Nehru and, for many years after that, the Congress reigned supreme in the absence of any serious threat to its dominance. The threat came from within the Congress when it split a bit after Indira Gandhi assumed charge. The split resulted in the first serious en masse movement of Congressmen from the mother party and the formation of a splinter group that failed to seriously challenge the ruling party. Since then, several other regional groups have formed and wiped out the Congress in several states such as Uttar Pradesh.
The disaster for the party took place in 1977, when Indira Gandhi’s expectation that her emergency measures would get the people’s approval turned out to be a gross miscalculation. Instability during the next few years brought Indira Gandhi and, later, her son to power. But after Rajiv’s demise, an influential high command trusted by the people was nowhere visible. The emergence of Modi and a mammoth BJP with well-thought-out electoral strategies resulted in massive erosion of the Congress—a phenomenon that seems to have gathered pace in recent months as the country goes into election mode.
In 2019, the question was whether the Congress could revive itself or was in its last gasp. It could have realised its weaknesses and rebuilt an opposition had it worked differently. Not that it didn’t know where it stood. Jairam Ramesh, now the party’s spokesman and a prominent member of the inner clique, said that demonising Modi alone would not help: “It is time we recognise Modi’s work and what he did between 2014 and 2019, due to which he was voted back to power by over 30 percent of the electorate.” Bhupinder Singh Hooda said the Congress had lost its way. Party leaders, therefore, knew that the formula of mindless opposition to the NDA, which they had pursued in the 2019 election, had not worked.
It could have learnt lessons from its own history. The most important ones are selflessness, fearlessness and a willingness to suffer consequences in pursuing a cause, even a jail term. Second, the development of an inner-party democracy was characteristic of the pre-independence period. Gandhiji wanted such democracy to permeate all levels of the party.
Third, the Delhi-centricity and concept of a high command that takes all decisions would have to be shed and local leadership would have to grow. In the 1950s, the Congress had a phalanx of influential leaders willing to take on even the prime minister. Fourth, the presence of the national leadership has to be felt all over India, and for this, the device of annual AICC meetings in smaller towns could have been revived.
It looked like the Congress had found its bearings a few months ago. It won resoundingly in Karnataka. At that time, it seemed to have understood its limitations and decided to align with other parties in the INDIA bloc. However, the party seemed to have misread the Karnataka result as a broad mandate. For the next few months, it cold-shouldered allies and ventured to take on the BJP on its own in several states, and lost the assemblies in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, winning only in Telangana. The wins in Telangana and Karnataka were primarily because of the states’ strong anti-incumbency sentiment and the party’s local leadership.
Meanwhile, the INDIA bloc went tukde-tukde. Nitish Kumar, the man who initially spearheaded it, abandoned it and scuttled back to the NDA. An angry Mamata Banerjee decided to shun the Congress and the Left in Bengal to contest all seats on her own. AAP compromised with the Congress in Delhi but chose to fight independently in Punjab, where the Congress was in power until the last election.
In other states, there were agreements on specific seats, while the allies took different positions on others. Even where the allies agreed, disgruntled leaders sometimes decided to contest on their own. At the same time, the Congress continued to leak members, even former chief ministers, ministers and legislators who chose to seek their fortunes elsewhere. While this was happening, the seemingly reluctant leader of the party, Rahul Gandhi, quietly walked from one end of the country to the other, taking a short break to visit Cambridge.
Is it then the end of the road for the opposition? Not necessarily, because Narendra Modi chose to lend a hand late in the day. The aggression he has been showing towards the opposition could be self-destructive. The electoral bonds issue has laid bare a seeming lack of integrity in the BJP. The voters may now see the excesses shown by the central agencies towards opposition leaders in a different light. The last straw was the incarceration of Arvind Kejriwal, the overwhelming electoral winner in both Delhi and Punjab.
June 4 will tell us whether the Modi effect, created by publicity on a hitherto unknown scale and the attribution of every government function to one father figure, will win the day this time too.
(Views are personal)
(kmchandrasekhar@gmail.com)
K M Chandrasekhar | Former Cabinet Secretary and author of As Good as My Word: A Memoir